Contentious Actors, Transnational Information Flows, and Implications for Advocacy in Digital Democracy


Allison Koh

PhD Researcher


Department of Political Economy
King’s College London
July 4, 2023

Current Research

Pro-Government Social Media on the Global Stage

Background slide material etc.

Use images from these reference slides:

  • https://allisonkoh.github.io/files/roasted-rattlesnake.html#/section-3
  • https://allisonkoh.github.io/files/roasted-rattlesnake.html#/how-do-globally-accessible-media-attacks-targeting-diaspora-regime-critics-benefit-repressive-governments

How do authoritarian regimes and their proxies use social media to curtail the global public sphere in their favor?

They integrate foreign platforms into their strategies for intimidating diaspora regime critics.

 

At Home 🏡

Abroad 🌍

Domestic Platforms

 

Example of states/proxies controlling platform policies at home (direct control over platform policies; disrupting information flows)

 

 

Foreign Platforms

 

Example of state-aligned trolling/harassment; content blocking; platform use restrictions

 

State strategies for foreign platforms abroad: ??? (can speculate that states + proxies frame repressive actions; lodge targeted disinfo and threats)

 

How do authoritarian regimes and their proxies use social media to curtail the global public sphere in their favor?

They can leverage gendered [power] dynamics and nationalist themes.

Text

How do authoritarian regimes and their proxies use social media to curtail the global public sphere in their favor?

Contributions

  • Autocracies and their proxies are capable of manipulating social media to curtail the global public sphere in their favor—even on platforms where their governments do not have direct provision over content moderation.

Potential Contributions to ADVODID

Implications of Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric for Digital Democracy

CHANGE FOR SLIGHTLY MORE RELEVANCE

Potential Contributions

Background

Potential Contributions

Mechanisms

Research Questions

Collaborations at Kings College London

Thank you!

koh@hertie-school.org

https://allisonkoh.github.io/

@allisonwkoh@mastodon.social🎓

@allisonwkoh@fosstodon.org📊

@allisonkoh_

Appendix

http://web.archive.org/web/20230420165609/https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial

http://web.archive.org/web/20230512082121/https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial

Measurement

Dependent variables 📈

  • H1: Engagement with state actors ⬆️
    • DV1: Retweet volume
    • DV2: Like volume
  • H2: Online activity of state actors changes
    • DV3: Tweet volume
    • DV4: Focus ✨
  • Modeling strategies TBD contingent on the data available

Measuring focus 👀

  • Focus measured as a function of topic diversity: % of unique words used for all topics (Dieng, Ruiz, and Blei 2020)
  • ⬆️ focus/⬇️ topic diversity
  • Process
    1. Translate tweets to English
    2. Run topic model(s)
    3. Measure topic diversity

Next Steps

Identifying potential data issues

  • Granularity of data ❓
  • Some accounts (automatically?) delete tweets that are “too old”

References

Dieng, Adji B., Francisco J. R. Ruiz, and David M. Blei. 2020. “Topic Modeling in Embedding Spaces.” Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 8 (December): 439–53. https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00325.